Have you seen the cartoons? In your opinion, are they offensive towards Islam?

Unlike many people I have actually seen all the cartoons. I think that quite a number of them are what I would consider “Islamophobic” cartoons. That does not mean that I agree at all with the interdict that has been imposed.

But we have to separate the two issues here. The court interdict that the South African judiciary has imposed is a whole new development that has only taken place, as far as I know, in South Africa. I think that it’s a mistake, a bad mistake. And I think that if the matter were to be taken to the Constitution Court, it would be overturned. It’s a very, very bad regression to censorship.

What’s your take on the issue of freedom of expression versus religious sensitivity?

In terms of the cartoons that appeared, I think some of them are Islamicphobic and I think that they are the kind of cartoons that I would not have done. But I have strong feelings about freedom of the press. And I feel that even if people do things that are regarded as offensive by some people, they have the right to do that.

On top of which I know that there was deliberate provocation by the cleric who took the cartoons around to show to other Muslim people what they look like – they deliberately added some offensive ones that were not in the original bunch to start with. So I think that we do have a case of a clash of values: the freedom of expression on the one hand and religious sensitivity.

Is this a question of religious groups being too sensitive?

I think that religious groups are too sensitive, and that goes for Christian groups, Muslim groups, Jewish groups, Hindu groups – they are all too sensitive. But the one thing that I do understand about religious sensitivity is that the climate at the moment is overcharged because of people like George W Bush and the Islamophobia that he has fed into the world. So there’s a lot of guilty parties down the road.

What about the cartoon that appeared in the Mail & Guardian?

The one that was done in the Mail & Guardian that was reproduced, I thought was a very funny and good cartoon – it was the kind of cartoon that I would have thought I could have done.

But most of the other cartoons I thought were either pretty weak or in many instances I think were nasty sort of cartoons which I wouldn’t have done. I just feel that editors should have the right to decide whether or not to publish that, and in South Africa our editors, mostly have decided (that was the only one that was published) and I didn’t think that that was a mistake to publish it and give it context in a very intellectual newspaper. Even in the process of refraining from that, they were interdicted, which took the choice away from them and the court imposed censorship on them.

As a cartoonist, where would you draw the line?

I wouldn’t draw the line at offending religious groups because I offend religious groups often when I have a particular message to get across, but I would not want to do cartoons that are over-generalising about religion.

But the most offensive of these cartoons that would have crossed my line says all of Islam that is embodied in Mohammad is taboo.

My line would be “don’t do anything that would over-generalise and become part of the problem”.